Big brother really is watching

One of the things I really miss about living in lovely downtown Noho is panels like these. They don't do that stuff around here. Interestingly I know everyone on the panel personally from my work at the law firm. I found Chris Pyle's remarks particularly telling.

Christopher Pyle, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College and a former intelligence officer, told the audience that NBC brought him 400 pages of classified documents last year for review prior to a story the network planned to do. The documents described Army surveillance of civilian activities, Pyle said.

"The only ones that were classified as genuine threats were military protesters," Pyle said. "The contents of the reports were garbage. There was no reason for the military to spend money for this kind of operation."

Pyle said that in comparison to the current intelligence network, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was "bush league."

"The difference is computers," he said. "The government has spent $1.2 billion intercepting our e-mail."

It really makes you wonder how anyone can believe they're not targeting ordinary Americans with this datamining.